TEHRAN – Ali Akbar Velayati, Senior Adviser on International Affairs to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, said Israel’s recent attack on Lebanon demonstrates more clearly than ever Hezbollah’s important role in safeguarding the country’s security and territorial integrity.
Speaking on Monday, Velayati condemned Israel’s repeated violations of the November 2024 ceasefire and escalation of attacks on Lebanese territory, warning that the regime’s actions show that “Hezbollah’s presence is more essential to Lebanon than its daily bread.”
Velayati’s comments came after Israel carried out a major airstrike on the southern outskirts of Beirut on Sunday, assassinating Haj Haitham Ali Tabatabai, one of Hezbollah’s most senior and influential commanders. The attack is Israel’s most serious ceasefire violation to date and the first time Israeli warplanes have attacked the Lebanese capital since the agreement.
He said the assassination, which took place in the heart of a densely populated civilian area, was a “clear violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty” and further evidence of Israel’s “total lack of respect for its international obligations.”
Arab media described the attack as a “dangerous act” and said it struck a residential building, killing at least five people and injuring 28 others. The aftermath left shocked residents, some covered in blood, running from their damaged homes.
Mr. Velayati said Israel’s targeted killing strategy is aimed at inciting fear and furthering its “illicit objectives,” but Lebanon has repeatedly demonstrated its resolve. He said the assassination of a figure of Tabatabai’s stature only deepened Lebanese people’s understanding of the role played by the resistance.
He stressed that Israel’s violation of the ceasefire “proved to everyone” what the disarmament of Hezbollah would mean for Lebanon, and that “Israel has shown that without resistance, Lebanon will be vulnerable to invasion.”
Tabatabai served as Hezbollah’s chief of staff following the death of a senior commander last year. As one of the group’s early founders, he played a decisive role in shaping Hezbollah’s military structure, ideological development, and resistance strategy. His assassination is a great loss to the movement and, in Velayati’s view, highlights “the depth of Israel’s fears about the capabilities of the resistance.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) strongly condemned the assassination, calling it a “despicable terrorist crime” that exposes Israel’s “weakness” in the face of the Axis of Resistance.
The Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on Monday that the Zionist regime had targeted “one of Hezbollah’s loyal commanders,” adding that such crimes would not impede the resistance’s progress.
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security, also expressed his condolences to X, saying that while the martyrs “fulfilled their duty,” Prime Minister Netanyahu “continues his adventurism to make it clear that confronting this illegitimate entity is the only way forward.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry similarly condemned the attack as a “grave violation” of the cease-fire agreement and a “brutal attack on Lebanon’s sovereignty” and stressed the need to hold Israeli leaders accountable for war crimes.
Velayati said Hezbollah has repeatedly defended and rescued the Lebanese people from Israeli aggression while forcing the “occupation regime” to retreat from its objectives. Given Israel’s “appetite for murder and pillage,” the presence of resistance is “more important to Lebanon today than food or water,” he said.
He added that positions taken by Lebanese officials in the past 24 hours show that the Beirut government is increasingly recognizing this reality and rejecting what he described as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “empty rhetoric.”
The attack on Beirut comes as some outside forces and Lebanese political groups have spent a year promoting the idea that disarming Hezbollah would bring peace. However, Sunday’s attack definitively overturned that idea.